N'ah, fa real though. I wish it was me, like the comment says, the 'dickishness' is almost inspiring. I find something oddly funny about being a matter of fact, pretentious dick to people who are farther up on the social scale than yourself. It either takes balls or ignorance (that's an inclusive 'or').

I am a shut out looking at the following MAs: Utah, Purdue, UC Boulder, Florida State, Texas Tech, and Houston...I haven't heard back from any yet, but while people are still checking this site, thought I would ask for insight..should I get into two to choose from...ANY INFO is helpful..environment, program, living conditions...anything you've heard or even better if you went there yourself for schoolThank you!!

You don't get in anywhere this year. You think you want to try again next year (or after you complete an MA program). So you want to find out WHY your apps weren't successful this year -- was it a bad letter of rec? Unknown undergrad? Lack of apparent philosophical talent? Bad luck?

Has anyone been able to get a grad department you were rejected at to talk to you about the weaknesses in your app? What's a tactful way to go about it?

This is my second year applying after a shutout last year. I was able to get feedback from two out of twelve schools. A faculty member from the first said he was surprised that I didn't get in and liked my writing sample; one from the other school said my writing sample was "fluffy". My other emails were either ignored or replied to with a canned statement to the effect that they don't have the time to address individual questions. I'd say don't bother contacting anyone. Just try to improve every element of your application and try to take a graduate seminar at a good school.

I got into Austin. They emailed me about a week ago. I posted it here. Not sure what that means for you if you haven't heard back - I don't remember if there were any posts about a wait list. Have you looked at the grad cafe?http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=philosophy&t=a&pp=250

Ok, so I posted this a couple weeks ago, and I didn't get any response. I'll try again. I have heard from multiple sources that when talking with departments you should play your cards close to your chest, that is, not tell them what departments that they are competing with for your commitment.

Can anyone explain why this matters? They can't exactly rescind your offer. What are they going to do, trash talk the other department(s)?What is the idea behind this?

Good evening everybody. I've found waitlist life quite difficult. I cycle between TGC, Phil. Part 2, and my e-mail account. Perhaps most waitlist notifications won't arrive until after the first week of April. Perhaps committees inform waitlistees as positions open up. Perhaps they wait until they've hear from all admitted students. Perhaps the tide of waitlist admission consideration is as erratic and unpredictable as, say, Mickey Rourke, for example. But when, my dear friends, do you expect the re-evaluation of candidates for admission to really get started? This admission process is all very complicated. Lot of ins and outs, lot of what-have-yous. Maybe I'll just become a video artist, like Knox Harrington.

We've already seen a small bit of waitlist action so far this season, but the bulk of it won't begin until the first of April. Many students are still trying to visit schools before they narrow down their lists.

Also, keep in mind that it is not unusual to see a lot of waitlist action on April 15.

Say, someone was fortunate enough to be waitlisted at, say, UNC, and were additionally fortunate enough to be accepted at Wisconsin and Duke. Well, you can easily imagine that the choice between Wisconsin and Duke could be a difficult decision. The applicant may not feel comfortable narrowing down their choice between Duke and Wisconsin until post-visit. Depending on the dynamics of their visit, they still may not be able to make up their mind. So, perhaps they take well until April to narrow down this choice. Say they decide to turn down Duke on April 9. Do you think this means they are going to accept Wisconsin? Don't bet on it. As long as the possibility of coming off the UNC waitlist remains, they probably won't commit. So, they contact UNC on April 10, and UNC says she still has a reasonable chance of coming off the waitlist. Perhaps they are still waiting for two people to commit, and she is #1 or #2 on the waitlist. They hold onto hope at UNC, and fortunate enough for her, she comes off the UNC waitlist mid-day on April 15. (Perhaps UNC's other female applicant finally made up her made to take Yale over UNC.) Now, the a spot just opened up at Wisconsin for one more applicant, right before close of business on April 15. Wisconsin goes to their waitlist. The first waitlister informs Wisconsin that he just came off the waitlist at Ohio State, and accepted their gracious offer just moments before. Wisconsin goes to contact the next person on their list, and she accepts. Her acceptance opens up a spot at Colorado and frees up the top waitlist spot at Northwestern ... and the dominoes continue. blah, blah, blah.

This scenario will be repeated a dozen times, causing several sets of dominoes to fall throughout the first week of April, and more continuing to fall all throughout the day on April 15 (and, sometimes even beyond the 15th).

"Acceptance of an offer of financial support (such as a graduate scholarship, fellowship, traineeship, or assistantship) for the nextacademic year by a prospective or enrolled graduate student completes an agreement that both student and graduate schoolexpect to honor. In that context, the conditions affecting such offers and their acceptance must be defined carefully and understoodby all parties.

Students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior to April 15; earlier deadlines for acceptance ofsuch offers violate the intent of this Resolution. In those instances in which a student accepts an offer before April 15, and subsequentlydesires to withdraw that acceptance, the student may submit in writing a resignation of the appointment at any timethrough April 15. However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offerwithout first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made. Similarly, an offer by an institutionafter April 15 is conditional on presentation by the student of the written release from any previously accepted offer. It isfurther agreed by the institutions and organizations subscribing to the above Resolution that a copy of this Resolution shouldaccompany every scholarship, fellowship, traineeship, and assistantship offer."

Interesting. Especially the last sentence. Has ANYBODY gotten a copy of this with any offer they've received? I haven't. The only school that even mentioned its existence was Stanford, which briefly mentioned the CGS and gave a link to their main page, which I had to navigate to find this. Anyway, it looks like you have until (and including) the 15th to accept your offers (or freely decline previously accepted ones), and then once that period is over you can only accept an offer from another school if the other schools agrees to release you of your obligation. Nobody tells you this shit...

There are 2 rejections from college park on TGC. They say that notification was on the website. Anyone want to claim these and say where on the website they found the bad news? (There doesn't seem to be anything like this on my online application)

Everyone says you have to work "really" hard in grad school. Is this true? I heard this about college too and it was not true. Clearly one has to work hard, but how hard? Really 50+ hours a week or is it just the not as smart people saying this? Can someone (not everyone) who is smart and interested get away with working less if they want to?

We know that departments have less funding or even fewer slots available, but how does the murky economic picture affect your own acceptance decisions? More specifically, I wonder whether people are more or less inclined to accept admission offers because of the recession. If you have been rejected from your dream schools but have an acceptance from a safety, say, would people be more or less willing to accept than in a different economic climate?

There are two Columbia waitlists posted on the grad cafe. One of them definitely says that they found out that they were (or would've been) waitlisted by sending an email to the department to withdraw their application. Does anybody want to claim the last one and say whether they found out because they contacted them or whether it was a normal notification email? Or is there anybody else who was waitlisted and feels like sharing?

Was accepted this afternoon via email, but without funding. This is the second program I've been accepted to without an offer of aid, and this one was worse than the first, as the language about funding was buried far enough down the page that I didn't catch it for at least 10 seconds.

I've read through most of this thread and I have two questions:1) Do schools actively inform those who are on their waitlists. Reading posts throughout the thread, it is not clear to me how people are finding out that they are on waitlists.2) I've heard nothing from several schools one way or the other (Columbia, NYU, Harvard, UColorodo, Georgetown). Is it safe to assume, at this point, that I've been rejected from these places?

I'm leaving town for 3 weeks, so I emailed Texas to see if they would give me a little info and I was informed that they are not at a stage to reject people but that I was neither on the admit list or waitlist. So, looks like I have my choices to mull. I'll probably keep my activity limited to the prospectives page from now on. Best of luck to everyone here!